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Whilst Poland appears today as a paradigmatic example of a homogeneous, exclusive national and cultural identity, reinforced by the hegemonic historical policy of a semi-authoritarian state, it is also challenged by Polish minority histories (civilian, multi-ethnic, non-Catholic, women). The main concern of the present article is the plural ‘Polishness’ that emerges from the constellation of these non-default histories. To examine the frictions of historical narratives in action, authors use spaces of historical museums as a field of observation, perceiving them as memory agents fostering not only confrontational but also negotiative memory politics. To identify situations in which tensions between the ‘central’ Polishness and its unorthodox variants are particularly evident, the paper takes a look at ‘non-central’ Polish territories i.e. ‘post-German’ areas, characterized by a complex heterogeneous past in which Germanness and Polishness, but also ‘Silesianness’ or ‘Borderlandness’ mutually clash and dialogue. Analysis of selected exhibitions’ construction reveals peculiarities of different local contexts in transitional spaces and strategies of resolving creeping conflicts between ‘the Polishness’ and plural, peripheral ‘Polishnesses’. As authors argue, these case studies – instead of a static model of open memory conflict and binaries – offer dynamic models of memory, and allow to introduce the concept of memory frictions.

This article focuses on the first historical museum in Serbia, established in Sombor in 2019 (the Museum of the Danube Swabians), with an exhibition devoted to the presence of Germans in Vojvodina. The artefacts presented at the exhibition, left behind by the Germans who used to live in Vojvodina, have been recognised as part of Serbia’s difficult heritage (the term coined by Sharon Macdonald). The article analyses the permanent exhibition and the museum’s efforts to involve the local residents in creating said exhibition. The article also asks whether the museum in Sombor can shape the collective identity of Serbs and undermine its ethno-nationalist character.

ABSTRACT Exogamous marriage alliances involving royal women played a prominent role in the conversion of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to Christianity in the seventh century AD. Yet the large number of well-furnished female burials from this period suggests a broader change in the role of women. The authors present the results of isotopic analysis of seventh-century burials, comparing male and female mobility and the mobility of females from well-furnished versus poorly/unfurnished burials. Results suggest increased mobility during the Conversion Period that is, paradoxically, most noticeable among women buried in poorly furnished graves; their well-furnished contemporaries were more likely to have grown up near to their place of burial.

The essay investigates the notion of queer heritage with regard to Central Europe and identifies a number of challenges related to the process of researching queer art history and heritage in Central Europe. Having addressed the status of largely “queer-philic” Western historiography, the paper offers a brief discussion of the Józef Czapski Pavilion in Krakow which is seen as an illustration of the problematic condition of queer heritage in Central Europe. Finally, by bringing the example of the 2017 show Dziedzictwo (Heritage), the essay attempts to offer the region-specific definition of queer heritage.

The topic of cultural heritage is the subject of many interdisciplinary studies. So far, these studies have focused on the issues of classifying particular types of heritage, their functions and benefits, components and determinants. However, relatively less attention was paid to the dimension of a methodical approach to education and rebuilding cultural identity through heritage. Meanwhile, generational changes, especially in the dimension of knowledge perception, indicate such a need. The aim of this article is to present the perspective of using open innovations in the transfer of cultural heritage used in shaping cultural identity and education. Our review and conceptual article is an attempt to draw attention to the problem of changes in the perception of cultural heritage by generations born in the era of the digital revolution and the need to take these changes into account in heritage education. Taking these conditions into account allowed the authors to develop a model for generating open innovation in the outside-in process and then to develop a model for making it available through the inside-out process. The role of education in this process was also emphasized.